Boy Next Door {Peter Kavinsky x Reader}

Boy Next Door

Peter Kavinsky was many things to many different people. To his mother, he was a son, one of two. To his lacrosse coach, he was the star player on the team. To his teammates, he was the leader of their pack. To Genevieve, he was a boyfriend, a lover. To most of the other girls at school, he was a crush, the hot jock, the unattainable. But to you, he was just Peter Kavinsky, boy next door.

You had lived next to Peter for as long as you could remember. His house was directly across the street from yours, so close that you saw him literally every day, whether it was in the driveway on your way to or from school, or through your bedroom window, which aligned perfectly with his. When you were young, you and Peter were as thick as thieves, playing outside in the street between your homes or in either one of your backyards whenever you had the chance. You went to school together, you carpooled together, and you often ate dinner at each other's houses. You had a matching pair of walkie talkies that you used to talk to each other during the day when you were at your respective houses. Then when it got dark and your parents made you go to bed, you each had a flashlight that you used to communicate with through your windows, sending each other short messages in a simplified form of morse code that you had learned from an old book at the library. Sometimes you would play outside together until the sun set, then you would lay side by side on your backs on the trampoline in Peter's backyard, pointing out constellations to each other and counting the stars until your parents told you to come home and get ready for bed. As a kid, you thought those nights would never end. But everything good always does.

When you got to junior high, Peter made a lot of new friends, and you didn't. Peter made all kinds of promises to you, that he would stick by your side, that he wouldn't leave you no matter how popular he got, but it was always so much easier to make promises than it was to keep them. So you sat by and watched as your best friend drifted away from you, slowly moving farther from you at the lunch table to sit with his new crowd of friends, hanging out more with Genevieve, talking less and less to you during school, and not talking to you at all outside of it. You told yourself to fight for your friendship, to not let him go, and you did at first. But over time, you saw how happy he was without you, and you couldn't bring yourself to make an effort for someone who had stopping trying for you a long time ago. So you stopped talking in between classes, and the now silent walkie talkie in your room slowly made its way into a shoebox full of junk that you hid in your closet, and late at night you would sit with a flashlight in your hand, staring out your window at Peter's, which was covered by his curtains. That was the first time you had ever experienced heartbreak.

But that was years ago. Now you're in high school, and you have a handful of new friends, and plenty of school work to keep you busy. You saw Peter at school all the time, and almost everyone you sat with at lunch talked about him constantly, but it didn't hurt so bad anymore. Those nights on his trampoline under the stars seemed so far away that you often thought they had just been dreams. You convinced yourself that you were completely over Peter Kavinsky, and you moved on with your life. Or, at least, you had until recently.

Peter had been acting different for the last few months. He was quiet at school, and he didn't hang out with his friends on the weekends like he used to. He even seemed distant to Genevieve, which clearly struck a nerve with her. Sometimes when you were at your locker, you would glance up and accidentally meet Peter's gaze, which he always quickly turned away from you. Even in the classes you shared together you felt as if he was staring at you from his seat in the back of the room. One day you saw him sitting at the lunch table you always sat at, but that was the day you had promised your friend that you would eat lunch outside with her on the bleachers, and he hadn't come back to sit at that table after that day.

You were trying to keep yourself from mulling over all of these strange occurrences as you walked out of school, when you heard someone behind you call out your name. "Hey, (y/n), wait up!" The voice called insistently, and before you even turned around you knew exactly who the voice belonged to. You stood on the sidewalk in front of your school building, face to face with Peter Kavinsky, boy next door, ex-best friend, most popular boy in school. His face was flushed, and looked almost out of breath, probably from running down the steps after you. You watched as he reached up to brush his hair out of his face before speaking again. "Do you need a ride home?"